VIDEO - Stani Kulechov (Aave): "Traditional financial institutions will continue to flock to DeFi"

Spearheading innovation during the previous bull run, the major decentralised finance protocols (DeFi) have spent the last few months structuring themselves to better meet institutional demand. This week, The Big Whale takes a look at the key developments in this sector since it took off in 2020.

In this context, we spoke to one of its leading figures, Stani Kulechov. Founder of ETHLend (renamed Aave in 2018), he is also CEO of Avara, the parent entity of the ecosystem comprising Aave, Lens (a decentralised social networking protocol), and GHO (Aave's decentralised stablecoin).

"When ETHLend was launched, explaining DeFi to institutional investors was a challenge. Today, all of them have teams dedicated to digital assets and the pace of change is accelerating," he recalls.

"We are talking to many traditional players who will continue to flock to DeFi. Those who can position themselves quickly, as BlackRock is doing now, will be able to grab the biggest market shares," predicts the Finnish entrepreneur.